


Orenda

by The_Readers_Muse



Category: Train to Busan (2016)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Minor Violence, Past Lives, Post-Movie, Reincarnation, because apparently somewhere along the line you eventually grow as people or something, just two ancient hate-bros hanging out and surprisingly not really hating each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 13:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10832223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: "Hey! Watch where you're goin-"





	Orenda

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own "Train to Busan." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: Revolves around the following prompt, "two people who have been reincarnated for thousands of years and have always found each other but instead of being in love they just fucking hate each other." – I really liked Seok Woo and Sang Hwa's interaction in the movie. It was gently antagonistic at best with surprising moments of depth and levity and I wanted to kind of cash in on that. This fic is told in Seok Woo's, the movie's main character's pov.
> 
> Warnings:post-movie, reincarnation, past lives, minor violence, drama, angst, just two ancient hate-bros hanging out and surprisingly not hating each other that much because somewhere along the line you eventually grow as people.

_"It is on this day, we remember those we lost. The sacrifices made so others could live. The families that were broken. The lives that were forever changed. But we also celebrate our nation's resilience and strength. We remember that we are unbreakable - even in the face of the impossible. In the face of the darkest of times. And that we can rebuild. We will always rebuild."_

He blew on his coffee. Lips dancing around the liquid that was too hot to drink to catch the beads of cream clinging to the edges of the paper cup. Only half paying attention to the broadcast of the remembrance ceremony - the forty-ninth year since the reanimation virus had spread through the nation - before he threw his stir-stick into the trash and started towards the door.

_"We would like to ask an honored survivor on stage to say a few words. Please rise as I introduce, one of our own citizens. She is a widow, mother and renown social activist, Sung Gyeong."_

He frowned in mid-stride. Turning to look behind him the same moment his hand met the door handle. Catching a flash of an elderly woman being escorted up the stage. A white pin of remembrance snug against her breast as she looked into the camera rather than the crowd. Eyes so familiar, so piercing, that it was almost-

"Hey! Watch where you're goin-"

His coffee went _everywhere_. Sloshing over the rim before he could get the lid back on. Staining his shirt sleeves and running in streaks down the inside of the shop's glass door. But perhaps more immediately, all over the front of the man's jacket he'd just run into.

_Shit._

He barely looked up, keeping his cup away from him - trying to minimize the damage as coffee pitter-pattered across the top of his dress shoes. Already cognizant that he was going to be late for work as he rushed out a hurried _"sorry."_ Inclining his head slightly so he didn't come across as completely rude before he shoved his allotment of napkins into the man's chest. Barely waiting until their fingers brushed before he was moving again.

_If he hurried he could still make the 8:45 train._

"Hey, do I know you?"

He looked up. Eyes meeting eyes as the man he'd bumped into made a grab for his sleeve. And just like every time before, a glance was enough.

The rush of memory and sensation that followed was both old and new. It was the same current they fought through to rediscover themselves every time they were reborn. Every time they happened upon each other in their next life. Never remembering the other or the lives they'd lived until they set eyes on each other again. Wavering unconsciously through the flashes. Dozens of lives, maybe more, where there was only one constant. _Him._

"Oh. It's you."

It wasn't exactly inspiring first words.

They rarely were.

But then again, perhaps he should be grateful.

At least Sang Hwa didn't punch him outright this time.

"We always...we always meet like this," he finally replied. The words coming out more like a croak than anything as people streamed around them. Moving like water over the rocks of a great river as the world seemed to blur at the edges. Seeing double every time he blinked as the memories from the last time - when he'd been Seok Woo and the man in front of him had been Sang Hwa - threatened to unman him.

 _His death._  
_  
His daughter._

Soo-an.

He closed his eyes. Blinking back a sheen of tears before he opened them again. Knowing he was hiding nothing as the man who'd been born Sang Hwa, and a hundred other names before that, cleared his throat and looked to the side. Allowing him to have his weakness and swallow it without comment.

He'd always been the better of the two of them.

That hadn't changed with time.

And part of him hated him for it.

For Sang Hwa goodness and selflessness seemed to come effortlessly.

But for him, it wasn't always that easy.

Sang Hwa lived and breathed like it was automatic – inherent.

It was like he'd been born riding the balance between one side or the other.

Susceptible to being pulled in either direction if the situation called for it.

He shook his head, his actions from the train leaving a bad taste in his mouth. All that'd mattered to him was Soon-an's safety. _His safety._ He'd been lucky to have the opportunity to atone for his mistakes before his death. It was not always a gift the fates allowed him.

Sang Hwa – or whatever he was called now – shifted awkwardly beside him. Tan sports coat drying dark with the coffee stain. Bits of napkin still clinging to the coarse fabric in a way that made his fingers itch to brush them off. Everything about him was the same. He was still wearing the same face. Still host to the same minute expressions he'd come to know so well over the passing centuries. He bet he could even tell what the man was thinking if he wanted too.

There hadn't been time on the train for their old animosity to rear its head. There hadn't even been time to properly address what they both knew and how they knew it. Quickly realizing they needed to work together to save what mattered most. Closing the door hadn't been personal, it'd been instinctual. But they'd both managed to get their shots in at each other. Something about the man's obnoxious ringtone and his job. It was the first time they hadn't reintroduced themselves, and he suspected it wouldn't be the last. He'd seen too much of this world to know it was anything _but_ predictable.

He supposed that to anyone else the idea of being reincarnated together sounded like something out of a fairy-tale or an epic romance. The story of a friendship or at the very least a comradery that'd lasted through the ages. It _did_ sound nice, after all. Like something legends were made of. The kind of thing one could feel self-important about when push came to shove.

The only problem was they actually _loathed_ one another.

It wasn't even due to one singular thing either.

There was no real bad blood between them, no ancient feud.

So it wasn't something they could even work out man to man.

It was more a case of continuously rubbing each other the wrong way.

Two personalities that weren't just born to clash, but to stay that way as well.

"What...what happened after I- after I…died?" Sang Hwa asked hoarsely. Ignoring the gaping hole of appropriate conversation in favor of the immediate. Gripping his arm in a rictus grip that made his bones threaten to ache. "Was she- did she?"

The last moments of his previous life flashed through his mind's eye.

She'd been holding Soo-an.

Promising him with her eyes that his daughter would be safe.

He remembered the numbing spread.

The absence of warmth.

The royal blue of his veins plumping through his skin.

_His daughter._

She'd been crying - calling for him.

He remembered gravity shifting.

But he didn't remember hitting the ground.

The truth was, he didn't know.

He didn't know if-

He opened his mouth, but before he could put it into words, Hang Hwa snorted and scrubbed his face with sugar-tacked hands. Rubbing at the back of his neck as his expression turned sheepish and frustrated.

"I need a drink."

The laugh he let go of in response was stuttered and self-depreciating. But it was honest. Real enough that Hang Hwa looked up at him in that way he had. Like he was waiting for the punch line. Waiting for him to say something smart and cocky, like he always did.

But this time was different. He could feel it. He didn't know if it was because of how things had ended in their last life or if they were finally growing as people, but instead of needling words or gruffness, he turned to him and nodded.

"I know a place," he answered.

* * *

His beer was tart and crisp against his tongue as he sighed through the first sip. Not realizing how much he'd needed it as the cap of Hang Hwa's beer _clat-clat-clattered_ across the scored varnish of the table. The bar was empty save for the lingering haze of the cigarette hanging loosely from the owner's lips on the other side of the room. Eying them cautiously in a way he couldn't really judge considering it was barely eleven in the morning.

"Why?" Hang Hwa muttered. Downing over half his beer with a grimace before slamming it back on the coaster. Moisture beading like blood down the sides, drawing his eye as he fiddled with the label of his own bottle. "Why us? Ah- sometimes I think we're cursed."

"We aren't cursed," he answered automatically, even though he certainly didn't feel it. The truth was, he _did_ feel cursed. And in more ways then one. Primarily to repeat this same damn conversation almost every time they met like this. Annoyed that Hang Hwa always seemed to want to go over things they both knew they couldn't change, merely for the sake of saying the words.

"Well, it feels like it. How can this be fair? We're reincarnated again, so I can what? Watch my wife - now old and grey - get even older and eventually die without being able to go up to her and tell her everything? Or even see my child? If this a punishment, what will it take to repay it?"

He thought about the time they'd found each other on opposite sides of a battlefield. Fighting for two kings time had forgotten save for their names. He thought about how the metal of the man's sword had vibrated and clanged when he had dropped it on the ground. Refusing to draw blade against him when he'd parried, slashing his opponent to the dirt, black hair kissing across his cheeks before Hang Hwa's outline had loomed in front of him.

He thought about how the flights of the arrow had flared out like a tail. Blossoming from the man's back like a gift from a distant archer. He thought about how the man had died there – almost in his arms. How his face had been the last face those eyes had seen. Then he thought about growing old and remembering that day like it was a stone in his chest. Something he'd carried for the rest of his life, and apparently into the next one.

"Maybe there are others, others like us?" he remarked hesitantly, more thinking out loud than anything. Finding it difficult to voice the reproachful words. The ones dripping in distain for all the mystical shit he couldn't see – the shit Hang Hwa always seemed to attribute to something or another. "Or perhaps there are more lives, ones we don't remember? Perhaps the answers lie there?"

_The answers._

_The sin._

_Maybe they were even one in the same._

He shook his head, half wondering when he'd let himself get this stupid.

Had his past life really rattled him that much?

Death wasn't unfamiliar to them after all.

"Maybe there's something we're supposed to do? Like in the movies?" Hang Hwa murmured thoughtfully. Looking up at the television screen in the corner where a news anchor was interviewing a panel of specialists. Talking in polite circles about the current state of chemical testing and what it could mean for the country's future going forward.

"This isn't a movie!" he snapped, losing his patience like it'd been tied to an loose kite string. Killing whatever progress they'd been lucky enough to make so far. Just like always. And not for the first time, it was completely his fault.

_How could this be like a movie?_

_There was no happy ending._

If their lives were a movie there would have been a last second cure. Hang Hwa would have made it off the train. They all would have. Maybe he would've even woken up with Soo-an sitting beside him on the train, pulse jumping in his throat before realizing it was all a dream.

This was a low-grade nightmare. A fever that always stayed just a few degrees below dangerous. Guilty about calling attention to itself because there was never a wound he could show that would tell the world he'd been born hurt.

The man cursed, hands slamming down across the table like he was about to stalk away, muttering darkly. Like he was about to disappear back into the crowd and leave him like this. Drinking alone. Adrift in a soul that had no moorings – no final destination. And perhaps for the first time, he realized that was honestly the _last_ thing he wanted.

He didn't want to be alone.

"I'm tired," he offered quietly, leaning away from the table as his beer wobbled dangerously in its own wet. Holding the words up like they were both an apology and a plead. Looking up at him through the long of his lashes as the man stilled.

Because he _was_ tired.

He didn't know it was possible to be as tired as he was.

It wasn't the sort of tired you could touch.

It was deeper.

When he'd been young, it'd seemed like a blessing.

This cycle of death and renewal.

But know he understood it differently.

_Maybe they were cursed._

Hang Hwa paused in the act of pushing away. Looking down at him for a smattering of beats before the wind sagged out of him. Sliding back into his chair with an aggressively tired _flomp._

After that, there didn't seem to be much to say at all. Nothing they hadn't said a dozen times before, at least. But of course, Hang Hwa still tried anyway. Lips dragging down the lip of his beer before he emptied the rest like it was nothing. Smacking his lips appreciatively as the bartender plunked down two fresh ones in front of them without being prompted.

He supposed there was something to be said for that.

For the easy grace for familiar things.

Because no matter how many times they found each other, they were still themselves.

"We'll figure it out someday. Together," the man told him. Thumping their shoulders together as he leaned in and poked his half-empty beer with the fat of his thumb – like he was goading him into catching up. "But for now, lets drink. If there's one thing the gods are telling us, it's that we're stuck with each other."

It seemed like as good a time as any to knock back the rest of his beer. Only half listening to Hang Hwa snort a laugh and order them a round of shots as a small smile itched at the corners of his lips.

_Together._

His smile was slow, but there and healthy all the same.

At least they were sticking with a general theme.

Maybe this time around it wouldn't seem like a chore.

_Maybe._

**Author's Note:**

> Reference:
> 
> \- Orenda: meaning a mystical force present in all people that empowers them to affect the world or effect changes in their own lives. This word has its origins in Iroquoian culture.
> 
> \- Sung Gyeong: is Sang Hwa's wife from the movie, now elderly and near the end of her life. The implication of this scene is to show her presence even as Sang Hwa starts to remember his past – and the family he could have enjoyed with her – considering it is alluded to that she never remarried after Sang Hwa's death. However, on a lighter note it also references the fact that she, Soo-an and the baby all made it and forged lives for themselves in the world.


End file.
